Whats the best way to go about replacing my kitchen sink and faucet?
Most cities have plumbing and electrical supply houses, where the tradespeople get their supplies and fixtures, and can order from catalogs. The stock items in most of those places, especially in the current soft economy, where inventories have been pared back to the minimum, is going to be pretty basic, contractor grade stuff, but perhaps adequate to your purposes. A stainless steel double kitchen sink, chrome single handle faucet, and strainer bowls, flexible hoses, and makeup fittings to existing pipes ought not to cost more than $500. Add another $80 to $100 for a basic contractor grade waste disposer, if you have wiring and sewage connections for such. Tearing out an old sink, cleaning up a remaining countertop for a new sink (perhaps patching old holes or slightly enlarging sink cut out for new sink), assembling a faucet to new sink, settin
$2000 is about right if you use a plumber for everything. Or, like, half that if you do it yourself. As far as home renovation projects go, this is a pretty simple one (and I’m no expert!) So I’d invest your first 20 bucks in an “Install Your Own Kitchen Sink” book and do it all yourself, leaning on the helpful guy at Lowe’s or Home Depot to get you all the small connecting doodads once you choose the big/visible/important parts. I’d never done a sink before last summer, but I installed my own starting with nothing but a roughed in plumbing pipe and a hole in the kitchen counter, and it still only took a single long Sunday afternoon. (Well, and the next evening, too, when I realized I’d put the taps on backwards and had to take it apart and put it back together again… but we won’t talk about that.) I didn’t need to change the hole in the counter (the old cutout was slightly bigger than necessary, and the lip of the new sink covered the extra space, luckily), but if I had, that would
I have been assured that there is always rot or water damage under or behind a kitchen sink. You don’t know what must be fixed until you pull things out and take a look. For this reason, you should allow more money and more time than you think, for this project. Don’t buy your sink and fixtures from a big box hardware store. I have had repeated disappointments with the quality and selections available at Home Depot and Lowes. Visit plumbing supply stores, and you will be confronted by a huge variety of choices, most of which are outside your budget. However, there are some more basic and affordable choices there, as well. Choose your sink and fixtures, and then get a plumber to do the install. This is not really a first time homeowner project.
